Shadow Walker (Revenant’s Series Book 1)

by Elissa Daye

  Chapter 23

  When she went to the library the next day, Julius was there waiting for her. “I need to talk to you, Julius.”

  “So talk.”

  “Without interruption.”

  “I see. The others are out for the moment, but I’ll make this an eavesdropping free room.” He pushed a button, and all the doors shut. The click of a lock assured her that no one would enter. When a yellow energy shield started to run across the sides of the room and burned into the floors and ceilings, she knew that they would be uninterrupted from teleportation as well.

  “Better?”

  “Yes. Last night I revisited the first portal that we went into. I found a few valuable things. First, I learned that it is possible to use stealth in the Land of the Shadows to prevent detection. It was easy to camouflage myself in black to look just like one of their own. I knew this would not be enough by itself, so I used some magic to create a cloud of the black energy swirling around me.”

  “Were you able to get close to the shadows?”

  “The cloaking works up until about six feet away. When you get closer than that, your own energy starts to be detected.”

  “This is good. We can start exploring the portals more clearly from here. What else?”

  “The souls that are trapped down there are in great peril, Julius. They are using some kind of dark magic to incinerate the souls into pools of energy that they are feeding on. We have to free them, Julius, not only because it is the right and just thing to do, but also because this energy is being used to create more shadows.”

  “Did you see this with your own eyes?”

  “I knew you were going to ask me that. I followed them down into another tunnel that branched into even more tunnels. They had crystals that trapped the siphoned souls into them and were using them to send the energy to these orbs that seem to act as a power station for the shadows. Not only is it powering the ones that are already in existence, but it is also manufacturing more, many more.”

  Julius pursed his lips thoughtfully. “This is all useful information.”

  “So now what, Julius?”

  “We need more information, Lyssa. I can’t take this to the Watch Tower elders if I don’t have enough supporting information. You’ll have to enter more portals.”

  “Julius?”

  “Yes?”

  “What have you heard from Hunter? Have you heard anything from Logan?”

  He looked uncomfortable in his chair, and she knew he must be keeping something from her. “I know what I’ve already shared with everyone else.”

  “You’re deflecting, Julius. I’ve known you long enough to know when you are hiding something.”

  “All I can tell you is that he is deep undercover, Lyssa. The Mole has given him entrance to the leaders that will move him up the branch in the Craven.”

  Lyssa could tell he was trying to protect her from something; what that was, she was unsure of, but she knew that she would not rest until she had found out for herself.

  When they had finished the conversation, she teleported directly to her room. Lyssa sat on her bed and thought over her options. She could continue to wait and hope that Hunter would return, or she could use the same cloaking method and search him out. Sit and wait forever, or take action? The reasonable part of herself told her that their mission was more important than any of their personal lives, but the injured heart in her chest beat out its own pleas, especially if she could see his face for even a moment. Would she still feel the excitement she had felt when she first fell for him? There was only one way to find out.

  Lyssa opened up a map of the U.S. and set her mind to locating him. She put one hand on her locket and tried to lock on to his energy. When she felt it, she put her hand on the map. Letting it fall over the different states, she stopped only when she felt a pulse of energy leap into her fingertips, for she knew that she had found him. She closed her eyes and made the leap through space to where he was.

  It was a dark, crowded nightclub, and the music was pumping loudly. The room was filled with hot bodies dancing within strobe lights that beat out a fantastic lightning rhythm. She could see a few Craven close to her that were walking upstairs, and quickly she looked down. For good measure, she put her hand around the wand in the long front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt and recast the cloaking.

  Lyssa climbed the steps cautiously, avoiding any eye contact with people around her. When she reached the top of the stairs, her heart almost leaped out of her chest. There he was, safe and sound. The joy was soon replaced with aching horror. He was not alone. A woman leaned over the booth behind him and pulled his face around for a kiss that lasted almost a lifetime. When he reached around and pulled her into his lap, she sucked in her breath. He was no longer her Hunter. He was someone completely different, and the shock froze her heart like dry ice and threw it to the ground to shatter into a million jagged pieces. No wonder Julius had avoided her questions.

  Hunter? Would he hear the pain in her thoughts? Would he even pull himself up for air long enough to have heard it? Lyssa watched as his face turned thoughtful for a moment, but when he didn’t respond to her plea for him, she walked closer to his booth. She thought that even with her energy masked, he would feel her. He looked up for a moment, but she turned her back quickly on him.

  Lyssa almost tripped as she ran down the stairs and waded through the bodies waving wildly around her. It would have been better had she not seen him there. The logical part of her tried to remind herself that Hunter was undercover. He had to convince the Craven that he was one with their sect. She tried so hard to remember this, but the tears were already starting to stream down her face when she left the building. Lyssa clenched her hands at her side and desperately attempted to still the flurry of emotions running through her. She kept walking, not caring where her destination was, just wanting to get rid of the pain, wanting to feel the numbness that she had created around herself long before Hunter had thawed her out. The fool who said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all clearly had never felt the pain of losing someone so cruelly.

  Lyssa sat down on a bench near a bus stop and waited for the bus to come, for she wasn’t ready to return home. When it arrived, she walked stoically up the steps and paid her fare. She rode the bus for hours, well into the morning, as the dawning light streamed through the windowpanes. The bus driver had not questioned her as the tears flowed silently down her face through each stop. Lyssa stayed there, slumped over in the seat, unable to move, to do anything but simply feel the hurricane of emotions running through her.

  Lyssa didn’t notice when someone sat down opposite her. She never looked up. And when a voice entered her solitude, she almost did not recognize it.

  “Lyssa, please.” There was desperation in the voice reaching out to her.

  Shaking her head from side to side, Lyssa couldn’t answer him. What could she possibly have left to say to him? She never looked up at him, not even when she rose from her seat and exited the bus. She was about to turn the corner when his hand touched her shoulder. He tried to get her to face him, but she just could not.

  “Please, just look at me.”

  Lyssa took a deep breath, steeled her confidence, and turned around to meet his gaze. “Did you need something?”

  “For you to understand.”

  “What is there to understand, Hunter? You’re on a mission, and you have a cover to keep. End of story.” She started to move away from him and was about to teleport away when he called her again. There was an aching sadness in his voice.

  “Please, Lyssa, you’re the only light I have left.”

  “I was the only light that you had left, Hunter. I don’t feel like any kind of light right now. You do what you have to do. The Watch Tower needs you. I don’t.”

  Lyssa took off the necklace he had given her and dr
opped it in his hands. Taking a deep breath, she returned to her room before she could change her mind. She could feel the sorrow in him before she left, but it was a party compared to the feelings that ran through her own heart.

  Chapter 24

  Lyssa wanted nothing more than to separate herself from Hunter right now. So much time had been spent waiting for him to come home, and it was nothing but wasted energy. She kept seeing his face from the last time she saw him, shadowed and slightly frail. Lyssa prayed that the Craven did not take his very essence away from him. She may still be reeling in pain, but she wanted nothing but the best for him.

  Lyssa was deep in thought in the parlor at the Watch Tower when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped up and almost screamed her head off until she saw Hunter standing by her. “What are you doing here, Hunter?”

  “I had to make sure you were okay.”

  Lyssa closed her eyes and tried to gather her wits. She let out a long compressed sigh. “You didn’t need to come. I’m fine. Go back to your mission.” She sat back down on the couch and curled up under the afghan, her body now facing the wall.

  “You’re mad at me. I don’t blame you. You must think the worst of me right now.”

  Lyssa didn’t just hear the sadness in his voice. She felt it call out to her like an echo across a void. It chipped through the barrier of ice she had started to grow around her, but she kept trying to deflect it. Lyssa refused to turn around. She thought for an instant that he had left, and panic hit her heart like a jackhammer. She sat up and turned back around to see him standing by the window, his back turned, facing desolately away from her—a tear formed in her eye.

  “What do you want?” Her throat was threatening to close on her.

  He turned around and looked at her in a way that broke her heart. She looked at him closely. His hair was disheveled, and while he had shaved his face recently, he looked haggard. He had not been eating properly. He was dressed in black from his head to his toes. The light that had once surrounded him was being blocked by the night.

  “You’ve changed too, Lyssa. You’re stronger. I wish you could see the woman I see.” Lyssa half expected to see him smile, but it was as if the man she was looking at no longer knew how. Was his heart hurting as much as hers? Did she even realize the sacrifice that he was making for them all? She’d been so wrapped up in herself that she had not thought about how he must be feeling.

  Lyssa put her hand on his shoulder, and a flash of light entered her mind. In an instant, that flash was replaced with an image of an older Hunter smiling down at a young boy, whom she could only assume was Hunter’s by the pure joy reflected on his face. The Hunter she knew was still in there somewhere. He still had a bright future ahead of him. She suddenly knew that he was going to make it out of this ordeal just fine. When she saw a woman walk onto the porch behind him, she could not believe her eyes.

  When she moved her hand off his shoulder, Hunter looked deep into her eyes. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  “Saw what?” Lyssa tried to dodge the question.

  “Please tell me what you saw.”

  Lyssa looked away from him. She did not want to share what she’d just seen. She didn’t believe it to be real, not after what she’d seen last night. She couldn’t bear to think of it. “No.”

  “Why not, Lyssa?”

  “Because what we want no longer matters.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.” A hint of desperation entered his voice.

  “Yes. It does.”

  Hunter closed the distance between them and tried to cradle her in his arms, but she pushed him away. She wanted more than anything to fall into him, but she could not give in. She had been holding it together the best that she could these past few hours, hours that had quickly felt like an eternity. Lyssa could not help the tears that ran down her cheeks. Was it selfish to want someone so much that you wanted to forget the rest of the world? Yes. Of course, it was. It always was, and that was why she had been desperate not to fall for him.

  “Hunter?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  Lyssa had never heard him call her that before, and it rattled her nerves even further. He was not giving up. “When are you coming back?” Lyssa felt childish for asking for something she knew she could not have, like a child pining for the last cookie in the cookie jar. She knew they had to uphold the peace, love, balance, and life of others, but how were they supposed to do that successfully when they were constantly reminded that those things were missing from their own lives?

  “I can’t answer that right now.”

  She nodded without a sound. Lyssa had already known the answer. He had to go back. He would always go back. His mission would always come first. That was the way it should be. She rallied up the defenses that she had been using to get through his absence and pushed away from him. “I shouldn’t have asked that. I know you’re doing what is best for the world.”

  This time, she was the one looking out the window, trying to gather her composure. She looked down at her feet and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to stuff the tears back into her eye sockets. Where was the anger? It was safer to deal with, much easier to mold into a plan of action. There was no plan here, just an emptiness that she knew would grow into a gaping, festering wound that there would never be a cure for. It was time to focus her energy on the Land of the Shadows and try to find Lana. Her attempts to learn more about the shadows would help distract her from the mess between them.

  “You should go.”

  “Don’t send me away like this,” Hunter pleaded with her.

  “Like what, Hunter? You have a mission to do. So do I. It’s all that really matters.” Lyssa walked to the door and started to turn the handle, but she just couldn’t do it. She needed him to free her but ached for him to hold her near.

  “It won’t be forever, Lyssa,” he tried to soothe her.

  “It already has been, Hunter. Don’t worry. I’ve survived much worse than this. I’ll survive you too.” Lyssa could see the tears forming in his eyes, but the cold-hearted bitch she was channeling could not resist. “Goodbye, Hunter.”

  Since he would not leave, she teleported away from him. She used her cloaking spell to hide from the world, and quickly set up shields that would keep him from teleporting into their apartment. Lyssa knocked on a door and almost crumbled into Jackson’s arms when he opened the door to his room. He held her there for moments before he helped her move inside.

  “Oh, honey!” He motioned to his friend Adam, and they both helped move her to the couch in the living room.

  Lyssa spent the next three days recuperating with Jackson at her side. When Julius had come to find her, Jackson had shooed him away. When Serena came looking for her, he chased her off. When Hunter tried to come see her, Jackson slammed the door in his face. After she had cried as much as a grieving person could cry, she decided it was time to get back to work. People were counting on her.

  When she returned to the Watch Tower, Julius was surprised to see her. He nodded to her quietly and gestured to the seat next to him. “Sit.”

  “Julius, I—”

  “No explanation needed, Lyssa. I’m just glad to have you back. I almost thought….”

  “That I was not coming back? This job is bigger than me, Julius. I just needed some time and space to get my thoughts in order. I’m ready to get back to work.”

  “Hunter is back with the Craven for the time being. He’s moving up higher in the ranks.”

  “I don’t need an update anymore, Julius. I’ve closed that chapter in my life.”

  “Lyssa, you should know that he asks about you every day.”

  “And how exactly does that information help me focus on my mission at hand?” Lyssa just could not fathom why Julius felt the need to tell her anything. He had not shared a single detail about Hunter before this moment. Julius h
ad always been so careful not to speak too much of his mission. Why in the world would he feel the need to mention it now?

  “I just thought you’d want to know.” He looked at her perceptively. He was right. A part of her wanted to know that Hunter cared, even though she knew she should not want to.

  “Okay. Now I know.”

  “He’ll be home soon, Lyssa.”

  “Uh huh.” She answered him without really hearing what he was saying. “Are we done here? I have some portals to find.” Lyssa picked at her fingernails and examined the spaces between where her fingers met her hands. Since Julius did not respond, she knew that she was reprieved.

  When she went back home, she saw that the locket now lay on her pillow. Was this Hunter’s way of telling her that he still wanted her? She picked up the locket and turned it over. There was something different about it. On the other side, there were words now engraved.

  I love you forever and always.

  When she opened the locket, she almost dropped it. Instead of Hunter’s smiling face, the picture of the boy in her vision was smiling back at her. On the other side was a small picture of a wedding that had not taken place yet. Lyssa saw his face smiling next to hers. She closed it quickly and sat down on the bed, still fingering the locket. Lyssa took a deep breath, then opened it again. This time there were no pictures inside.

  Lyssa.

  She heard his voice drift across the breeze blowing through the window behind her. It was a desperate plea meant for her ears alone. Biting her bottom lip, she tried to keep herself from replying, but somehow even that could not hold her back. She placed the necklace around her neck and felt the protective glow of energy swarm around her. His energy. The part of him that made her feel close to him, the beat of his heart, the smile of his mouth near hers. He was still there in the darkness.

  Hunter.

  It was a simple reply because she didn’t know what else she could possibly have to say. Lyssa was still drawn to him, even though she had tried desperately to push his memory aside. She would probably always be drawn to him, whether it made sense or not. Now was not the time to stand around, waiting to hear more. It was time to get moving, time to forget the voice that tried to pull her closer to it. She needed to do something else to distract her from the sadness that was fighting its way back into her heart. Lyssa pulled out her black clothing and got ready for her journey through the next portal, ignoring the warning chills that permeated the air. There was a job to do, and nothing else mattered.